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Court of Appeal decides that unions do not have a veto during collective bargaining
17 June 2019The Court of Appeal (“CA”) has ruled that offers made directly by an employer to its employees in relation to pay and working hours did not amount to an unlawful attempt to bypass collective bargaining contrary to section 145B of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (“TULRCA”). S.145B is only engaged if the employer’s purpose is to stop employees’ terms of employment from being determined by collective agreement on a permanent basis.
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Lachaux: defamation clients must prove “serious harm”
17 June 2019Has a statement about you caused you serious harm? That is the question posed by section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013, which has been the subject of a long running defamation claim brought against the publishers of the Evening Standard, the Independent and the Huffington Post. The Supreme Court has now delivered its judgment on the interpretation of section 1, which has significant implications for the media industry.
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IR35 – What is changing and what you need to do
17 June 2019The government is committed to cracking down on “disguised employment”. In order to achieve that, the IR35 rules are changing in April 2020.
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The EU gets Transparent and Predictable
14 June 2019The EU’s Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive - long in the gestation – is on the brink of becoming law. We look at what it means.
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Pensioner sues Wolverhampton Wanderers over design of logo
13 June 2019Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club have succeeded in defending a copyright claim in which the claimant contended that he designed their distinctive wolf head logo over 40 years ago.
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Law Society Report: AI in the Justice System
13 June 2019The Law Society has now published the final report of its Technology and the Law Commission (the “Commission”) investigation into the use of algorithms in the justice system. It follows a year-long exploration by the Commission of whether algorithms’ use within the justice system should be regulated to protect human rights and trust and, if so, how.
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Voluntary overtime must be included in holiday pay if sufficiently regular and settled
12 June 2019The Court of Appeal (“CA”) has confirmed that the Working Time Directive (“WTD”) requires voluntary overtime to be included in holiday pay if it is sufficiently regular and settled to amount to normal remuneration. On the wording of their NHS contracts, the claimants were also entitled to have both compulsory and voluntary overtime included in their holiday pay.
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Ask about... Retail, Fashion and Hospitality
12 June 2019Many of our clients in the retail, fashion and hospitality sector face similar HR issues. Each month one of the members of our team will identify an issue, ask how you would deal with it and provide our advice. This month we asked Emma...
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The Trade Secrets (Enforcement, etc) Regulations 2018, one year on
07 June 2019The UK implemented legislation on 9 June 2018 bringing into force the EU Trade Secrets Directive. This article looks at the impact this legislation has had in the employment context where a claim for misuse of confidential information may now also include a statutory claim for misuse of trade secrets.
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Fail to cooperate at your peril! Court finds that contracting party’s conduct was a repudiatory breach of an implied duty to cooperate
04 June 2019In a recent case, the court implied a duty to cooperate where close collaboration between the parties was required to perform the contract. The Court also found that one party’s failure to cooperate was a repudiatory breach that the counterparty could rely on in treating the contract as terminated.
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APAC Bulletin - May 2019
03 June 2019Welcome to the May 2019 edition of our APAC Bulletin covering the latest employment and immigration updates across the region.
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Ads & Brands Law Digest: May 2019
30 May 2019Welcome to the May 2019 issue of our monthly Ads & Brands Law Digest. We have selected the legal and regulatory developments from the month that we think are most likely to be of interest, with a very brief summary and then a link to the original and official source or full text of the item.
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GDPR Season 1: Off to a Slow Start?
30 May 2019Like winter in the popular HBO series Game of Thrones, privacy professionals warned that ‘GDPR is coming’ many months, years even, before the army of supervisory authorities (SAs) and data subjects started to amass on their doorsteps. For the most part, the warning fell on deaf ears. It was only when the first snows had already started to fall, signalling the imminent arrival of winter, that GDPR preparations began in earnest – with panic soon turning into hysteria, for some.
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Failing to enhance pay for shared parental leave is not sex discrimination
28 May 2019In an emphatic judgment, the Court of Appeal (“CA”) has ruled that it is not direct discrimination, indirect discrimination or breach of equal pay rights to provide enhanced pay for maternity leave and statutory pay only for shared parental leave.
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Employment benefits - a tool for attracting talent in Ireland?
28 May 2019Diageo’s recent announcement offering 26 weeks paid parental leave to all employees in Ireland, regardless of gender or sexual orientation or whether they became parents biologically, through adoption or surrogacy, is commendable.
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Employee ordered to pay over £500,000 in legal costs in a dispute involving breach of restrictive covenants and data privacy
24 May 2019Following a trial in the High Court where an employer was successfully awarded final injunctions to prohibit a former employee from breaching post-termination restrictions (“PTRs”), the losing employee was ordered to pay 90% of his former employer’s legal bill.
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Court of Appeal rules on liability of overseas co-workers for whistleblowing
21 May 2019In an unusual case of whistleblowing detriment brought by an overseas employee against two co-workers also based overseas, the Court of Appeal (“CA”) has ruled that the Employment Tribunal (“ET”) has no jurisdiction to hear the claim in relation to personal liability of the co-workers, because they were outside the scope of British employment law.
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Court of Appeal sets high bar for parties defending fraudulent misrepresentation claims and dismisses attempt to broaden transferred loss principle
21 May 2019The Court of Appeal has confirmed the presumption of inducement in cases of fraudulent misrepresentation will be “very difficult” to rebut and rejected a Claimant’s attempt to recover the loss of its subcontracting sister company via the “transferred loss” principle.
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European Court rules that employers must keep records of actual time worked
16 May 2019The European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) has ruled that employers must keep a record of all hours worked by their workers each day, in order to ensure compliance with the rules on maximum weekly working time and rest breaks.
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UsToo? – Addressing bullying and sexual harassment in the legal profession
16 May 2019Earlier this week, the International Bar Association published its report on bullying and harassment in the legal profession. The message is clear – as a profession we are not meeting the highest standards of conduct which are integral to our positions as bastions of the law. We must change within the profession, and take responsibility for driving wider societal change.